


Zero Gravity

by Rita_of_Roses



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 17:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rita_of_Roses/pseuds/Rita_of_Roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Something is pulling me<br/>I feel the gravity of it all"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Fedoracat. 
> 
> The quote in the summary is from the song Gravity by Maaya Sakamoto.

Danny floated invisible in the rafters of the chapel. He could be sitting in the pews below with the rest of Jazz's surviving family but he didn't want to cause commotion among the other attendees. A teenage boy who hadn't aged in 76 years would undoubtedly cause a stir and today wasn't about him. Below him one of her grandchildren looked around for uncle Danny. He pulled his knees to his chest and hugged himself tight.

The pianist played the first notes of a slow somber song. He didn't know when the music stopped and the eulogy began. He was lost in his own revere, mourning his sister and all the other people he loved who had died. She was the last one. Ninety-two years old, natural causes. She went to sleep and never woke up. It had been quiet and painless, and for that he was grateful. The others hadn't been as lucky. At 65 it was discovered that Maddie had a brain tumor. She fought hard but the cancer won. She died two years later. Jack died the next year in the hospital due to complications after a freak accident in the lab. Sam was going to do environmental work in the amazon. Something was wrong with the plane. It exploded before it left the runway. And Tucker...he didn't really want to think about Tucker. He'd gotten a job working for a high end electronics manufacturer. One day he was in one of their stores overseeing management. Men came in with guns and ordered everyone to the floor. They robbed the place but it wasn't enough. They held the people locked inside hostage for a large ransom. Tucker tried to be a hero and was rewarded with a bullet to the head, followed by several more riddling his body. Even Dani was gone. Turns out she hadn't been as stable as either of them had hoped. He found out when Vlad called him to say he had found a puddle of ectoplasm in his lab along with various signs of a frantic struggle to save herself. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks.

He focused for a moment on the events below him. Her daughter was speaking now. He buried his head in his knees. He didn't want to be here. He'd seen more than enough funerals already. With every death a part of his life fell away. They were all he had, his only reason for remaining half alive. Peace had long since been reached between earth and the ghost zone under the direction of Valerie Grey, chief in command of the interdimentional peace forces. She was gone too. She died instantly when a natural portal opened where she stood speaking at the 23rd anniversary of peace between the worlds, ripping her in half. With Jazz's death he had lost the last thing he had to hold on to.

He waited patiently until he heard the final note of the last song fade out. The congregation stood. Some approached the coffin to pay their final respects. Others simply left. He watched each of her friends say goodbye until finally the chapel was empty. Danny floated down to where his sister lay. He knew he only had a few minutes before the undertaker came to take her away and he didn't plan on wasting a second. He paused as his feet settled to the floor before raising an invisible hand to touch her cold wrinkled cheek. He closed his eyes and stood unmoving in his own kind of goodbye. Footsteps echoed through the chapel. His time was up. He slowly withdrew his hand and gazed one last time upon his sister.

“I love you Jazz,” he whispered, then turned on his heels and walked away.

* * *

 

Jazz's family pulled into the driveway of the house they had shared. After all his other friends and family had died Danny had moved in with them. They had immediately accepted him as a ghost and as family. Her daughter walked slowly to unlock the front door while her wife helped their children out of the car. The normally boisterous family was quiet as they went about their business. Jazz's daughter walked into the kitchen to start dinner and stopped when she saw an envelope sitting on the counter. She picked it up to examine it. It had no indication as to who it was for. She turned it over and opened it. Inside was a note written on a single sheet of paper in a familiar swooping hand.

> To whoever should find this letter,
> 
> Thank you. I'm grateful to all of you for accepting me and helping me through the years. I truly love and care for all of you, and I am sad to be saying goodbye. Don't take this the wrong way, I wish I could stay with you, but Jazz was the last person I had who has been with me through everything, and the last person I truly cared for from before my life stopped. I made this decision many years ago. I don't want to live forever. I've stayed for the people I loved and now they are all gone. I have lived 90 years. It's time for me to go too. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, and goodbye.
> 
> Love,
> 
> Danny Fenton

* * *

 

 

Danny stood on top of the ops center at his childhood home. It was owned by the government now as a national landmark. The site of the first man-made ghost portal. Of course, that title really belonged to Vlad, but he wasn't keen on dealing with the questions that would come with revealing that. He performed the final checks on the device he had spent months perfecting. Satisfied, he slung the metal box onto his back and fastened it tightly. White rings appeared at his waist as he shifted to his ghost form. He looked at the dark skyline before him and took one last contented breath of the cold night air, an unnecessary action for a ghost, but it seemed right in his last moments on earth. He sighed out his breath which fogged before his eyes in a way that was distinctly different from the warning sign he hadn't seen in many years. No. Everything was calm in the cold night. Everything was as it should be.

He flicked the switch to start the engines. Sound rose up around him in a deafening roar. He smiled for a moment at the sad manner in which he would carry out his life's dream. Fire flared onto the metal roof of the ops center and he blasted into the air at neck-breaking speed. He watched as the city below him swiftly shrank to nothingness. As he approached the mesosphere he hit the secondary thrusters and rocketed farther skyward until he broke free of the restrictive atmosphere. He let his momentum carry him through the twinkling darkness that wasn't really dark once you escaped the lights of civilization. He marveled at the smattering of stars against the brilliant spilled colors of gas clouds. Behind him the swirling river that was the Milky Way shone brightly. He continued until the jet pack finally ran out of fuel and sputtered and died. He phased off the now useless contraption and left it behind as he drifted on until it felt right. He used his own powers of flight to counteract his momentum and came to a relative halt in an unremarkable corner of space.

He felt weightless. Obviously. He was in space now and it's not like he didn't know what it felt like to float in midair. This was different. He felt truly weightless. All his responsibilities, his happiness, his heartache had been left on the ground. For the first time in his life he felt like he understood what it was like to be in zero gravity. He floated for a moment just taking in the landscape. It was every bit as majestic as he had imagined it would be. In that moment everything was right. His thoughts drifted back to them. Mom, Dad, Jazz, Sam, Tucker, Dani, Valerie. He smiled and whispered soundlessly into the muffled silence. _I'll see you soon_. He gazed once more at the beautiful stillness around him before closing his eyes for the last time. White rings flared, adding his own brightness to the sparkling wonder of space, and Danny Fenton finally died.


End file.
